A "Sketch-a-Doodle" book designed and printed by Jenn and Teen. Inside the sketchbook are 52 assignments. One a week, for a year.

I got working on them as fast as I could, to get caught up, but have been to lazy to take pics and post. Well here they are, 3 more Bad Drawings.

Drawing #59:

Once, when I was a kid, we made sock puppets in school. I remember designing it being very stressful. After I had attached the googly eyes, I couldn't think of what else to do to it. I went into a bit of a panic... I was worried that anything I added after the eyes would ruin it. So I left it as just a sock with googly eyes. Well drawing this felt just like being back in kindergarten. I froze after the eyes.

Drawing #60:

This Narwhal is sad cuz it hasn't yet made out in the middle of a street with a hazmat looking astronaut.

Drawing #61

This is an owl. After this third drawing I've decided to try and not make every drawing in this book some sort of attempt at cartooning "cute", or "Cute-ooning" as I'm nowgoing to call it. Million Bad Drawings - Always coining new phrases! or "Coinphrasing"!! (I just came up with that one too). I just noticed now that one of his toes on the right is drawn wrong. I'll pretend he's just mid scratch. Foot itch. Do I win a no-prize?

Sunday, January 16, 2011

I've been stupid busy these last weeks... STUPID busy. But not stupid busy doing bad drawings. Until tonight.

Tonight I went to "Dr. Sketchy's" and did some life drawing.

It was the theme show for Camilla D'errico. There is a whole post on that alone, but it will have to wait. I'm tired, I'm kinda sad about how bad the drawings went, and I just flat-out don't feel like doing it.

However, I will post it in the next couple of days, along with some other cool stuff to show... TWO new projects.

And just to have something a little more visual for this post, here's a "Bad from the Past"!!

This one goes WAY back, to when I was 18 and wanted to be Robert Bateman. It's hanging, professionally framed, at my Uncle Hans and Aunt Rea's. Never have I passed it without wanting to take it down and try to fix that poor bears misshapen head.

This was at a time that I LOVED doing my work in Conte, but not with structure.

Had I structured out these bears, maybe the one in front wouldn't have a terrible case of Wonk-Head. It's like a weird tumor breaking through the side of his skull.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

I wanted to try and paint my brother's family as part of their Christmas present this year. I'm not a very good cartoonist, but in the end, I think it actually turned out alright.

It wasn't without a few REALLY bad drawings though.

Trying to get the essence of Troy, Caryn and Jordan is a terrible task for someone who is in no way good at caricatures.

First I attempted a rough of how I would lay it out (Bad Drawing #43) . I realized at this point that I had no idea what pets they own, so I had to give him a call. You can see my awesome notes along the side.

2 short haired cats (grey and brown) and 1 bird. At one point I was going to just draw Jordan holding a dog as I believe she should probably have one eventually.

My brother was the hardest to draw. this was my first attempt (Bad Drawing #44)

I don't actually see my brother as a muppet. I don't know why his mouth looks like that. I figured that even if the drawing looked nothing like Troy in the end, as long as he was wearing a Bears shirt, someone would figure it out.

The 3 top drawings of Troy ( #45, #46, #47) Weren't working at all for me. I got all angry, cursed my inability to cartoon, and then finally drew the one on the bottom (#48 ). This actually said "Troy" to me. I went with it. The two Caryns (#49, #50 ) drove me back to wanting to stab my brain.

TROY!

This sketch (#51) sort of had a Caryn vibe to it that the two scribbled over ones (#52, #53) were lacking... DONE! I gave structuring it out a little better in the bottom doodle(#54).

Jordan I drew once (#55 ). Girls are hard to draw.

So pink colerase in hand, I drew them all standing together (#56 ).

They needed to be standing closer together, so I photocopied the drawing, and cut and pasted them in tighter.

I then transfered to Canvas to paint. It is not lost on me that Caryn's arm seems to meld right into Jordan's arm. BAD. I didn't realize until after it was painted.

Painting was the hardest part. It's not at all as easy as Family Ties makes it look. Also, I don't really know color theory. I have been told I went very saturated with my color choices.

A MILLION!?!?! I thought it was ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND!??!?

You're RIGHT! In my search for the famous Chuck Jones quote about bad drawings, I consistently found it quoted as " Everyone has a million bad drawings in them...". It turns out Chuck Jones was quoting his teacher, and his his teacher had told him that everyone has "one hundred thousand" in them...

However, I consider myself a pretty crappy artist, and I probably have more than a hundred thousand bad drawings in me. So this blog is my attempt to get the MILLION bad drawings out of my system and be an AWESOME artist. This may never happen. A million drawings is a lot. But "A Million Bad Drawings" has a better ring to it than "One Hundred Thousand Bad Drawings", right?

I should note that I generally hate everything I draw, and I'm not fishing for compliments. "That's not bad!" does not help me. Critique does! Critique away! Let me know what I'm doing wrong. You won't hurt my feelings. Asshole.